Elena Baltacha, tennis player, 1983-2014

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 5 Μαΐου 2014 - 19:12

The enclosed world of tennis, perhaps the most tight-knit of the main sporting circuits, was plunged into mourning on Monday for one of its own. Not one of its biggest stars, but perhaps one of its brightest lights.

Elena Baltacha, who died of liver cancer on Sunday aged 30, had been Britain's No. 1 player for much of her adult life. In global terms, this did not amount to massive achievement: she was never ranked higher than No. 49 and never got past the third round at any of the grand slam tournaments.

However, all through her career she was beset by illness, having been diagnosed, aged 19, with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver condition that causes multiple complications, including chronic fatigue. When that was under control, she had more than her share of the normal injuries which even healthy athletes expect, including a chronic ankle problem that finally forced her out of the game last year. She was as good as she was thanks to a rather unBritish dollop of willpower which was obvious to anyone who watched her play.

But then she was a quintessential outsider. Baltacha was born in Kiev and came to England only because her father Sergei, one of the leading footballers in the old Soviet Union, blazed the trail for Soviet players to come to the UK in the final years of Communism.

He signed for Ipswich when Elena was five, and then moved to Scotland, where she took up tennis and came into the orbit of Judy Murray, Andy's steely mother, who saw in her a kindred fighting spirit. As an 18-year-old Baltacha knocked the seeded Amanda Coetzer out of Wimbledon, joining the lengthy list of British teenagers who have momentarily offered a hope of emulating Virginia Wade, the last home player to win the women's singles, in 1977.

We will never know what she might have done but for fortune, but as she matured she progressed up the rankings and reached her highest mark in 2010. And her proudest moment came when she represented Britain in the London Olympics two years later and, more than most, reacted with touching and even tearful pride. It is perhaps significant that her main rival within British tennis was Anne Keothavong, whose parents were refugees from Laos.

A year ago, after nine months away because of her ankle, she was raring to get back, talked of playing tennis for another five years and said her absence "made me realise what I want to do".

That proved impossible and in late 2013 Baltacha married her coach Nino Severino and began to concentrate on her tennis school in Ipswich. Her cancer was diagnosed only this January and made public in March. The tributes focused not so much on her powerful hitting, but on her resourcefulness, uncomplaining nature and all-round niceness.

© The Financial Times Limited 2014. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation